Schools are not as safe as we think.

During my freshman year, the people I were “friends” with started to change. They started to try to be cool and started using slurs that normal people would never use. That year, I learned how to deal with being called a “chink”. My friends would constantly make fun of me about my rigorous practice schedule for piano and that my parents would beat me if I didn’t get A+’s on every test. Throughout the year, I just noticed things that were being said about me that no one would ever say to my face until one kid said to me. I was in Spanish minding my own business when this group of boys was being really loud and annoying. I told them to shut up so everyone in the class could work without distraction. One of the white, fake popular kids in that group told me that my opinion doesn’t matter because I can’t see anyway. The idea of stereotypes behind Asian people is that some of them are helpful to us and they push us to work harder. But many of them are just derogative and bruise our self-confidence. Being told I had a small dick in 8th grade is something no one wants to go through. Others may have had it worse off than me but I want to bring it to attention that students are increasingly learning and becoming more inherently racist as we grow, and that this is a recipe for disaster.

The time I was called the N-Word at a High School Football game

Football games are the social gathering of every high school kid with nothing better to do on a friday night. It's a chance to let loose and mess around with the kids you only meet in a classroom. It's a chance to let find out the real side of your fellow peers and not the dead soul less version of themselves in an 8 a.m. class. It's a place of acceptance and comradery. Or so I thought. In Santa Clarita, the majority is that of White community who haven't experienced true diversity and don't know how to properly act around people of color. Being a black teen in this environment has made me become on guard with the job of putting people in check and making them understand when they've said or done something offencive. With that though a challenge is created to see how far they can take it and push me over the edge. This became clear my sophomore year. Standing in the crowded student section at COC, the home field of Hart High, enjoying the game and excanching jokes with my classmates a teammate of mine on the baseball team walked up behind me, and in a joking but highly offensive way, exclaims "we don't want niggers here" and then preceded to push me down in to the row of students I was standing directly above. The biggest problem is that in today's world kids don't know what to say and what not to say even if it is directed as a joke.

The Time I was racially profiled at LAX

The summer of 2017 I was traveling through Europe with my mom and aunt. Our trip started off at LAX when we were asked to step aside at security because my mom and aunt were born in Iran, as said on their passports. I, on the other hand, was born here in the United States, but that did not matter. We were all patted down significantly more than necessary and questioned. We were all speaking English in the airport minding our own business and went through the scanner that beeps if there are any concerns. We had all our bags checked more than the people in front or behind us. As a young person, it bothers me that these stereotypes are set for all middle eastern people. Due to false media and a warped sense of history Americans are taught, the idea the Middle Eastern people are dangerous or terrorists fills the heads of too many. Exactly 0 terrorist attacks in America have been committed by an Iranian. For my loving, caring, and compassionate family and friends to be lumped together with ideas that represent such evil really frustrates me and honestly hurts me. I want more attention to be raised to this issue of racially profiling, specifically when it comes to traveling because a white person can be just as likely to commit a tragic act of terror as a person of color. I am confident that what happened to me was not a rare thing and way worse happens all the time.